Favorited: Six Apart

Today is my last day at Six Apart.  It's been 3.5 years with an outstandingly clever and humane group of unforgettable friends.  I dedicate this Apperceptive/Six Apart-NYC montage to all of you.

[WARNING] This is a long, photo-intensive, inside-joke-ridden post.

I start things off with the doorbell of our old office on 67 Greene St in SoHo, NYC.  You can almost make out the "AP" of the Apperceptive lettering behind the peeling Six Apart sticker.  The sound quality of that bell cannot be described in this space (use your imagination). 

67 Greene, #3

In the beginning, there was Apperceptive: a small, consulting firm specializing in online publishers and blogs.  I started at Apperceptive when it was a shared office on 21st Street in NYC, then we moved to SoHo about a month later.  

This was the rickety, slumped old staircase into the SoHo office.  Smelled like wet cardboard boxes.

Was the coding tent invented in this office?   I don't think so, but we certainly used it often, since (a) it was chilly and (b) we kept some late, weird hours.

 

Apperceptive was small and intense.  We shipped like crazy, and I don't say that lightly.  There are too many projects and happenings to mention in this post, but there are things to note in this picture:

• The Team. <3.  With Ginevra!
• "Wedding Central", the makeshift room to the right side of the picture
• The wirenest at the bottom center
• The central heating unit, upper left, powered by blowtorch (I think?)

Okay, one project worth mentioning: MLBlogs.  We did this.  Incredible, herculean team effort. Overnight launch.  Jokes involving a plugin that "bleeps" bad words.  I WILL NEVER FORGET.

 

Another project: THE OBAMATRON.  I hated it.  But I worked really, really hard on it with Tracie and it didn't launch.  I'm glad.  No, I will not give you a link to the live and egregiously offensive soundclips that it plays.  

I learned a lot about my coworkers in our very first Karaoke session.  There's a lot that I might be willing to forget in more recent trips.  But I really mean it when I say that my friends really don't know know me until they've heard me do Karaoke.  

 

38 W. 21st St, #7

In December 2008, when Apperceptive had been a part of Six Apart for almost six months, we moved our ever-growing team into 38 West 21st St.  It took us a while to get comfortable in the winter months.  I see 5 knit hats in this photo alone!

Coding Tent count: 2.

 

But, during those days, our team swelled to be so large that we needed to plan an actual holiday party.  This is a chart I drew for Tracie while planning the playlist for said Holiday Party in 2009.  It's Intensity (Y Axis) over Time (X Axis), with plotlines for Attendance, Drunk (projected and actual), Musical Tempo, and the availability of food and drinks (two humps hugging the X axis).  Note the suggested musical genres to map the increase in Intensity, peaking with "Synth", and denoting the time I planned on leaving with the vertical dotted line. 

 

 The party went quite well.  From the looks of this shot, we were still in the Jazz segment.

Spring came along, and that meant trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with Kate and Tracie to hunt out the Cherry Blossoms. SO, SO FUN.  I should do this haircut again soon, and hang out more often in #naturefacts on freenode.

 

I really, really loved my Cute Overload daily calendar.  I loved it so much that it subconsciously inspired me to convince my fellow co-workers that there is nothing more popular on the internet than cats.

And so we made a community for cats.

And one April Fools' Day joke later, a community for sheep was born.

I loved working on the Six Apart team, though I didn't love the challenges in communicating across the continent with our San Francisco office.  I'm in SF with Kimmie and Tiff in this photo, and Matt and Finn are in NYC.  We made the best of it.  For the record, Doug Roberts is an outstanding individual and all-around good person.

Generally, when you walked into our office, you'd see 20+ individuals absorbed in their work with only the quiet hum of constant typing to signify life.  But fun was usually only a joke away.  Here, Henrietta is holding Booster, Phaedra's pup, who had a very serious crush on Matty.  I'd almost call it inappropriate.

Part of our jobs was spending time on the web and understanding the impact that new apps had on the world of blogging.  And part of our jobs was to QA those new services, though I had a tendency to troll them instead.  I mean, did you know that Interhoods considers Prospect Park an actual neighborhood?  Look,  Bigfoot lives and codes there!  

.tiff is an amazing artist, blogger, person, and friend, who drew this picture of baby Lev in David Jacobs' office.  I wish we all would have brought our children and dogs into the office more often!

I think my favorite day was our second picnic in Central Park on a perfect day with kids and dogs and friends and everyone.  

There's this recurring joke that I haven't seen a lot of movies or read a lot of books that geeks have been exposed to.  Yes, that's correct.  And when David, Finn, and Matt gave me The Hobbit for my birthday, they sealed their fate as brothers to me.  And I let them have it.  WOULD NOT READ AGAIN, but WOULD BLOG AGAIN. People looked at me a little differently after they read how I really felt about this beloved work, and, honestly, the community that grew out of Hobbitted was better, louder, funnier than I could have never imagined.  

Thanks, everyone, for working so, SO hard with me at Six Apart, and for being your silly selves with me on the internet, and for becoming my family in New York City.  I <3 Blog.

Comments

[Dave Aiello]

My family will love this post Natalie. Thank you for writing it.

[Skoolgirl]

How bittersweet. You know it's interesting after using 6 apart services for awhile you kind of start to feel like you know the team, little by little.

So it's hard to see such post. I hope your future endeavors are just as bright, of not brighter. :)

Also I forget about that open space computer office design, we've got cubicles and one of the project team has what we call a Bull Pen, which is more and open space design where there is one large cubicle with sectional walls.

Good luck and continue to post here :)

[Tracie Lee]

besides the knit hats, you can't forget the fingerless gloves!!

[Xris Ernest Hall]

Soooooo many things in this post made me nostalgic. In a sad way, but also a good way.

[Matt Jacobs]

Natalie, it is a gross understatement to say that things will be different when you're gone. Thanks for being awesome, making the NY office an amazing place to work, and totally destroying us all in karaoke.

[Byrne Reese]

What great memories this stirred up for me. Thank you Natalie!

[Steve Calderon]

Blog <3 you, too, dude.

[rayners]

UNNEXTABLE!

Also, I remember the MLBlogs launch. Multiple two liters of Diet Dr. Pepper and my first coding tent, and a brief affair with the spanish version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome on ultra-late-nite television.

[Paolo]

I still miss the emoness of the SoHo heater and doorbell!

[Paolo]

(and of course, all the wonderful people. i ditched my new employer's halloween party to foobar with you guys last night!)

[oof! blam! argh!]

Doug Roberts is an outstanding individual and all-around good person

I think the subtext here is that I'm also ruggedly handsome.

I'd also like to thank NPo in particular - and the NYers in general - for being great and not knifing me like my 7th grade algebra teacher told me you would.

[jimn]

This is like the destruction of the first temple.

Also, #glpbacon on freenode.

[Nima Badiey]

Natalie... as always, an absolute pleasure to have worked with you. The reverse, I'm sure, is not true.

[T]

It was great working with you Natalie!!

[Mark Simmons]

You're a rockstar. Can't wait to see what you do next. It was a pleasure working with you.

[snarkout]

Much love, Natalie. Unnextable!

[apgwoz]

I'd have loved to NEXT this post, but two UNNEXTABLEs certainly trump a single NEXT (if that's not a rule, it should be), since it's truly appropriate. Six Apart is a great family and a tough place to say good bye too. Here's to next steps and new memories!

[David Jacobs]

"I'd have loved to NEXT this post, but two UNNEXTABLEs certainly trump a single NEXT (if that's not a rule, it should be)"

One UNNEXTABLE trumps any amount of NEXTs. Unless the birthday exception is in play (these new rules will be published soon...)

[apgwoz]

@djacobs NEXT (for this conversation) we can argue the rules in a future post, but we shall not ruin the historic and beautiful nature of this post.

[finn]

Natalie wrote: Was the coding tent invented in this office? I don't think so.

Rayners wrote: Also, I remember the MLBlogs launch. Multiple two liters of Diet Dr. Pepper and my first coding tent, and a brief affair with the spanish version of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome on ultra-late-nite television.

Let the record show that my coding tent as pictured above (at the tail end of the MLBlogs launch) was inspired by Rayners. When he mentioned he had a coding tent that night I was jealous and created my own.

Thanks for this post, Natalie. It was a great run!

[Tadashi]

Hi Natalie, absolute pleasure to have worked with you. Thank you very much!